Leaders of the recreational and commercial fishing industry are planning a boat protest against federal policies Thursday outside the harbor of Vineyard Haven on Martha’s Vineyard, where President Obama and his family are summer vacationing.

The protest is being organized after a bipartisan, bicameral coalition of federal lawmakers -- including the core of the President’s Congressional base on banking and health care issues -- have given up hope of working productively with Obama’s top appointee for oceans and fisheries, Jane Lubchenco, who heads the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Boats from Gloucester and New Bedford, the hub ports of New England, Point Judith, R.I., and New York and New Jersey are expected, according to Tina Jackson, president of the American Alliance of Fishermen.

The heads of the region’s two primary seafood auctions in Gloucester and New Bedford have agreed to co-sponsor the protest, with the Ciulla family that owns and operates the Gloucester Seafood Display Auction agreeing to provide fuel to boats in need of help to make the trip. An anonymous donor has given the protesters a grant of at least $5,000 for fuel vouchers.

With elements arriving from different directions, the armada is timed to meet in Vineyard Sound at noon on Thursday. The Coast Guard was being informed of the action, Jackson said Monday.

A co-organizer is the Recreational Fishermen’s Alliance, the lead organizing group behind the national protest outside the U.S. Capitol in February that drew as many as 5,000 demonstrating against federal policies seen as heavily tilted against the industry and unduly swayed by non-government environmental organizations.

Since her appointment to head the NOAA by President Obama, Lubchenco, who had been an officer of the Environmental Defense Fund and a leader of the Pew Oceans Commission, has pushed to convert the fisheries into commodities markets under a management system known as catch shares.

In a statement to the Times soon after her confirmation by the Senate, Lubchenco’s office said her goal was to see a "significant fraction of the vessels ... removed."

With the stocks rebuilding strongly, fishermen wonder at the need to reduce the size of the work force.

Mayors Carolyn Kirk of Gloucester and Scott Lang of New Bedford have condemned federal fisheries policies for bringing unnecessary social and economic hardship as a certain price for the uncertain resource management benefits of catch share regulations.

Lubchenco has argued that consolidation, which has consistently followed catch shares, produces fewer but better jobs while giving the government a stronger hand in conservation.

The industry sees catch shares as an invitation for market speculation that will condemn the fishing culture to the same fate that conglomeration brought to the family farm.

New England’s groundfishery, America’s oldest continuing industry which had harvested commonly owned resources, was converted to catch share principles on May 1 -- with a total allocation divided and distributed to fishermen as catching rights that cane be bought, sold or traded.

But the minute size of the total allocation and the eccentric mixes of quota from the 15 species and 20 stocks in the groundfishery have pushed many businesses into -- or close to -- insolvency, a development that earlier this month brought a proposal from a bipartisan coalition of U.S. senators for a $100 million buyout.

The planned Thursday protest also comes amid growing anger over a fisheries law enforcement system that has been found by the U.S. Commerce Department’s own Inspector General’s office to have subjected the fleet to vindictive treatment and excessive fines used by the agents and lawyers to finance foreign travel and daily operating expenses.

The longtime federal fisheries police chief, Dale Jones was put on paid administrative leave in April following the first report by Inspector General Todd Zinser, but Jones remains on the NOAA payroll to the tune of $150,000 a year.

"We will be lining up to protest law enforcement abuse of funds, the blatant arrogance and abuse of Dr. Lubchenco and her ENGO (environment non-government organization) driven agenda, the continued employment of Dale Jones and every other abuse our regulators have punished our industry with over 33 years of corruption and egregious behavior," the organizers said of the protest in a prepared statement.

"There is a call for a protest of all fishermen, commercial, recreational, lobstermen," the statement said. "... Now is the time to show our backbone, our strength and our unity."

Marcia McNutt, an Obama administration science adviser, commented on the corporate culture of BP in a memo sent to Michael Bromwich, the administration's new top offshore oil exploration regulator, on June 28.

Critics of the moratorium, including Gulf Coast political figures and oil-industry leaders, have said it is crippling the region's economy, and some have called on the administration to make public its economic analysis. A federal judge who in June threw out an earlier six-month moratorium faulted the administration for playing down the economic effects.

After his action, the documents show, administration officials considered alternatives but chose to impose a new drilling moratorium after concluding the industry lacked viable strategies for containing another major spill. Officials also expressed doubts internally about the reliability of the equipment the industry uses to prevent blowouts.

The administration hadn't previously disclosed its estimates of the economic effect of the controversial halt, ordered after the April explosion at a Gulf of Mexico well. The documents doing so were filed in a New Orleans federal court by the Justice Department earlier this week as part of the latest round of litigation over the moratorium.

Spanning more than 27,000 pages, they provide an unusually detailed look at deliberations about how to respond to the legal and political opposition to the moratorium...

Billions in stimulus money have failed to make the economy soar. Douglas Schoen on how Obama has hurt the recovery by flooding America with free cash.

Recent reports from the Federal Reserve, the Labor Department , and the Commerce Department clearly and demonstratively show that the Obama Administration’s policies have not succeeded – indeed they have failed in ways that are clear and unambiguous.

The Obama administration’s policies and programs are not producing real, long lasting results, and there has been no real growth.

Put another way, an unprecedented degree of federal government spending and intervention vis-à-vis the $787 billion dollar economic stimulus package, the $81 billion dollar bailouts of GM and Chrysler, and the enactment of health care and financial regulatory and reform bills have done nothing to stimulate our anemic recovery and have fundamentally failed at creating private sector jobs, or generating economic growth necessary for a sustainable, healthy recovery.

Indeed, they have done little more than generate an unsustainable national debt, which now exceeds $13 trillion. The Federal Reserve reported that the pace of recovery in the United States “has slowed in recent months” – with a growth rate of just 2.4 percent in the second quarter down from 3.7 percent in the first quarter of 2010, and an annual rate of 5 percent at the end of 2009.

Exports are down, lending by banks continues to contract, employers are reluctant to hire, and consumer spending is at a historically weak level for a recovery period.

Obama's $787 billion economic stimulus package has failed to live up to the lofty expectations and predictions of the administration, and has failed to create the amount of jobs necessary to significantly reduce the unemployment rate.

In February 2009, the administration released a report called "The Job Impact of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan." The report, drafted by former Council of Economic Advisers chairwoman Christina Romer, predicted that if Congress passed a stimulus plan, unemployment would plateau below 8 percent last fall and by this month register at 7 percent.

But with total nonfarm payroll employment declining by 131,000 in July, and the unemployment rate remaining at 9.5% for the second consecutive month, it is clear that the stimulus package has created few new private sector jobs, and will probably not create any new economic opportunities for them any time soon. The economy lost 8.4 million jobs in 2008 and 2009. This year, private employers have added only 559,000 jobs.

At best, it produced short-term boosts to the economy through subsidization of the public sector, with government stimulus programs like Cash for Clunkers, Home Buyer Tax Credit and construction projects.

To be sure, these programs provided an incentive to buy cars and houses in the short-term. And indeed, there was a big spike in automobile purchases when the Cash for Clunkers program went into effect last July, allowing consumers to trade in their older-model vehicles for $4,500 rebates toward more fuel-efficient new cars between July 1 and November 1, 2009.

But it is still unclear whether it has had any effect on increasing demand in the long-term. Indeed, by the end of 2009, auto sales plunged 35% right back to where they were before the stimulus was enacted. Today, the automotive industry work force is 30 percent smaller than prerecession, as evidenced in the July jobs report.

And upon thorough examination, it is clear that not only have the Obama administration’s interventions in the auto industry failed to produce the desired long-term results, it is responsible for making the situation worse in the short-term.

Take, for example, the Administration’s auto industry intervention – adding $60 billion to the bailout, and making the government the majority shareholder in GM and the United Auto Workers (UAW) union the majority shareholder in Chrysler. To be sure, the Administration’s actions did help stabilize the auto industry. But the way that they did it added to the overall cost of the bailout, and substantially reduced automotive industry employment.

According to an audit prepared by the inspector general of the Troubled Asset Relief Program, President Obama’s auto Task Force pressed General Motors and Chrysler to close scores of dealerships and accelerated job losses. Indeed, Neil M. Barofsky, the special inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program of the Treasury Department, has said that the Administration "made a series of decisions that may have substantially contributed to the accelerated shuttering of thousands of small businesses and thereby potentially adding tens of thousands of workers to the already lengthy unemployment rolls…ased on a theory and without sufficient consideration of the decision's broader economic impact.”

Meanwhile, "by reaching into virtually every sector of economic life,” argues Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg, “government is injecting uncertainty into the marketplace and making it harder to raise capital and create new businesses," while implementing various programs have discouraged hiring by increasing the cost of labor.

The tax increases and regulations associated with the health care reform and financial regulation bills have exacerbated uncertainty and have effectively discouraged consumer spending.

There is a general uncertainty about the implications of Obamacare and its "bewildering array of new government agencies, regulations and mandates, " as stated in a report by Republican Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas, GOP Rep. Kevin Brady of Texas and the minority staff of the Joint Economic Committee.

Indeed, twenty states and the National Federation of Independent Business have filed a lawsuit against the health care overhaul because they face imminent harm from its mandates. Finally, the passage of the financial regulation bill, which was signed into law by President Barack Obama last month, has left our financial system even more vulnerable to abuse than it was before its passage. The big banks are still too big to fail, controlling a larger share of the nation’s deposits than before the crisis, and the bill failed to address reorganizing Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.

Meanwhile, none of the 533 new regulations, 60 studies and 93 reports included in the financial regulatory overhaul provide effective restrictions or controls on mortgage-backed securities and similar financial instruments that permitted giant banks to disguise predatory lending decisions from unknowing investors.

The net result of these failed policies is that consumers are reluctant to spend, entrepreneurs are reluctant to invest, and employers are reluctant to hire to the degree necessary to spur economic growth.

We need a bold new focus from the President and his party.

Put simply, they must abandon their failed policies and adopt a bold new commitment to fiscal discipline and targeted fiscal stimulus of the private sector and entrepreneurship.

They must put forth a set of focused initiatives aimed at reducing the debt and cutting spending, with an emphasis on tax cuts, fiscal stimulus, and a series of initiatives to stimulate and encourage job creation. Specifically, the Administration should:

Extend the Small Business Innovation Research program, and expand lending through the Small Business Administration’s loan program to encourage more start-ups and enable small businesses to hire and train more workers

Declare a payroll tax holiday for new businesses so they can invest in new jobs.

Jumpstart the economy by investing in green technology and create new jobs and make the United States a leader in clean energy manufacturing, especially solar, and expand the innovation and development of renewable energy.

Expand the federal research and development tax credit to businesses that invest in research and development, and increase research grants to small businesses that are developing new technologies.

Close tax loopholes for the rich to provide real tax reduction for middle-class and working families without increasing the deficit.

Create a National Infrastructure Bank as proposed by President Obama in his 2008 campaign. This Bank will take infrastructure decisions out of the hands of politicians and out of the world of pork barrel politics, end the infamous “bridges to nowhere,” and make infrastructure decisions that contribute to growth

Above all, the Obama Administration must accept the fact that ONLY private enterprise can create jobs – more stimulus money is not the answer.

Douglas Schoen is a political strategist and author of the upcoming book "Mad as Hell: How the Tea Party Movement is Fundamentally Remaking Our Two-Party System," to be published by Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins on September 14. This post originally appeared at the Daily Beast and is republished here with permission.

WASHINGTON - Responding to one of the first major directives of the Obama Administration, the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) today jointly established historic new federal rules that set the first-ever national greenhouse gas emissions standards and will significantly increase the fuel economy of all new passenger cars and light trucks sold in the United States. The rules could potentially save the average buyer of a 2016 model year car $3,000 over the life of the vehicle and, nationally, will conserve about 1.8 billion barrels of oil and reduce nearly a billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions over the lives of the vehicles covered.

This action is one important step in fulfilling the Obama Administration’s commitment to moving towards a clean energy, climate friendly economy.

“These historic new standards set ambitious, but achievable, fuel economy requirements for the automotive industry that will also encourage new and emerging technologies,” said Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood. “We will be helping American motorists save money at the pump, while putting less pollution in the air.”

“This is a significant step towards cleaner air and energy efficiency, and an important example of how our economic and environmental priorities go hand-in-hand,” said EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson. “By working together with industry and capitalizing on our capacity for innovation, we’ve developed a clean cars program that is a win for automakers and drivers, a win for innovators and entrepreneurs, and a win for our planet.”

DOT and EPA received more than 130,000 public comments on the September 2009 proposed rules, with overwhelming support for the strong national policy. Manufacturers will be able to build a single, light-duty national fleet that satisfies all federal requirements as well as the standards of California and other states. The collaboration of federal agencies also allows for clearer rules for all automakers, instead of three standards (DOT, EPA, and a state standard).

Today’s final rules, issued by DOT’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and EPA, establish increasingly stringent fuel economy standards under NHTSA’s Corporate Average Fuel Economy program and greenhouse gas emission standards under the Clean Air Act for 2012 through 2016 model-year vehicles.

Starting with 2012 model year vehicles, the rules together require automakers to improve fleet-wide fuel economy and reduce fleet-wide greenhouse gas emissions by approximately five percent every year. NHTSA has established fuel economy standards that strengthen each year reaching an estimated 34.1 mpg for the combined industry-wide fleet for model year 2016.

Because credits for air-conditioning improvements can be used to meet the EPA standards, but not the NHTSA standards, the EPA standards require that by the 2016 model-year, manufacturers must achieve a combined average vehicle emission level of 250 grams of carbon dioxide per mile. The EPA standard would be equivalent to 35.5 miles per gallon if all reductions came from fuel economy improvements.

Specifically, the new National Program:

Reduces carbon dioxide emissions by about 960 million metric tons over the lifetime of the vehicles regulated, equivalent to taking 50 million cars and light trucks off the road in 2030.

Conserves about 1.8 billion barrels of oil over the lifetime of the vehicles regulated.

Enables the average car buyer of a 2016 model year vehicle to enjoy a net savings of $3,000 over the lifetime of the vehicle, as upfront technology costs are offset by lower fuel costs

“We are delivering on our mission and President Obama’s call for a strong and coordinated national policy for fuel economy and greenhouse gas emission standards for motor vehicles, and we will do so in a way that does not compromise safety,” said NHTSA Administrator David Strickland.

“These are the first national standards ever to address climate change,” said EPA Assistant Administrator for Air and Radiation Gina McCarthy. “Over the coming years, America will witness an amazing leap forward in vehicle technologies, delivering fuel efficiency that will save us money and protect the environment.”

The joint final regulation achieves the goal set by President Obama to develop a National Program to establish federal standards that meet the needs of the states and the nation as a whole to conserve energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. President Obama first announced the effort last May with a broad coalition of automakers, the United Auto Workers, States, and the environmental community.

NHTSA and EPA expect automobile manufacturers will meet these standards by more widespread adoption of conventional technologies that are already in commercial use, such as more efficient engines, transmissions, tires, aerodynamics, and materials, as well as improvements in air conditioning systems. Although the standards can be met with conventional technologies, EPA and NHTSA also expect that some manufacturers may choose to pursue more advanced fuel-saving technologies like hybrid vehicles, clean diesel engines, plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, and electric vehicles.

In conjunction with the United States, Canada is also announcing Light Duty Vehicle GHG-Emissions regulations today. U.S. EPA and NHTSA have worked closely with Environment Canada to ensure a common North American approach.

Climate change is the single greatest long-term global environmental challenge. Cars, SUVs, minivans, and pickup trucks are responsible for almost 60 percent of all U.S. transportation-related greenhouse gas emissions.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The U.S. Chamber of Commerce slammed President Obama's economic policies Wednesday, saying administration officials "took their eyes off the ball" and "neglected" to focus on job creation.

A letter posted to the business group's site and a summit with 500 business leaders were the latest moves in an ongoing battle between big business and the Obama administration.

Two are at odds over the best way to keep the recovery from slipping into a double-dip recession. The Chamber believes tax cuts are key to job creation. The Obama administration, however, has focused on stimulus and spending to create jobs.

The Chamber said in its letter that the administration "vilified industries while embarking on an ill-advised course of government expansion, major tax increases, massive deficits and job-destroying regulations."

The letter also included "some different approaches to unlock frozen capital and jolt our economy back to life."

Legislation 'causing uncertainty': In a speech at the jobs summit, Chamber president Tom Donohue focused on what he considers a glut of recent legislation, including financial reform and health reform.

"We must address the cumulative job-killing impact of over-regulation," Donohue said, stressing the uncertainty he considers rampant in U.S. businesses.

Donohue also said lawmakers were "spending at astronomical levels -- we're setting ourselves up to be the next Greece," a reference to the debt crisis plaguing the European nation.

Americans for Financial Reform, a group supporting the financial reform bill that the Senate is expected to pass this week, took issue with the Chamber.

"Attempts to kill accountability and transparency for the financial sector should come as no surprise given who pulls the strings for the Chamber: Wall Street," the group said in a statement.

0:00 /4:48Whitney: Reform will hurt banks

Separately, in its latest stimulus report, the White House's Council of Economic Advisers said stimulus has already fueled about 3 million jobs. That's in line with earlier ongoing predictions from Christina Romer, chairwoman of the council.

But in January 2009, Romer predicted the stimulus package - then just a proposal from the new administration - would keep the unemployment rate around 7% at the end of 2010.

A Labor Department report earlier this month said the American economy shed 125,000 jobs in June. More than 8 million jobs have been lost since the start of the recession.

Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve's latest economic forecast was more pessimistic when on Wednesday it issued the minutes of its June meeting. The Fed now predicts the unemployment rate would be between 9.2% to 9.5% this year, slightly higher than previous estimates.

In response to Small Businesses are Not Hiring - Should They? I received a couple emails worth sharing. The CEO of a healthcare consulting company writes ....

Hello Mish

You ran a series of articles on small businesses, hiring and expansions. I thought I would add to it.

I run a small firm, with about 45 employees and 40 contractors. We have been growing pretty well, close to 80% topline numbers for the past 3 years. Our average salary is over $100,000. We have some innovative software we sell to the industry. We also offer operational improvement strategies and IT consulting.

We provide great healthcare insurance coverage to our employees. It is necessary in order to attract talent and I am in the talent business. Our healthcare costs went up 90% this year – and that is on a 6-figure number to begin with. We found only one insurer willing to provide us coverage, United Healthcare.

Another Atlas Shrugs - Small Business Owners Chime In

Every other provider pulled out of our segment of the small business market. Cigna, our prior carrier, refused to renew at the last minute on a technicality despite being our carrier for the past 3 years.

Our management team’s focus for two weeks was seriously diverted as we dealt with the consequences of this. Had we lost coverage altogether, we would have been out of business as our employees would go elsewhere.

Our staff is young and healthy, by and large. Average age is early 30s, in the healthcare consulting, software and technology industry. Only in a severely government distorted marketplace can a firm with a young and healthy staff that has had coverage for years face insurers pulling out or demanding a 90% hike.

We had plans to add one person to our R&D staff, a low 6-figure salary. That was shelved because of healthcare costs. Our software development cycle is slowed as a result.

How has the healthcare bill helped the economy? In this case, not one bit. And everyone of my employees has been hurt, because we switched mid-year, those who were part way into their deductible have to start all over again. That is a few 1000s for a number of employees. Because of a bill that passed that cost us money, and most of our employees money. No one is happy with this.

I have additional areas I would like to invest in. Areas that involve productivity gains, not just taking share from someone else, and not just for us. Many of the things I would like to do would reduce costs for my customers and build efficiencies in the healthcare industry as well.

One of our software products reduces the cost of clinical trials, and has saved millions of dollars in better planning. Another model we have developed reduces the cost of carrying inventory for bio/agritech firms. I believe it is the best in the world, developed by a Ph.D. out of Carnegie Mellon. It saves millions a year for large companies (Monsanto, Bayer Crop Science, etc. type of companies).

Productivity is the wealth of a nation.

However, thanks to Obama administration policies, we are pissing our edge away on dumb stuff which makes us hesitate to invest more. Thanks a lot, Congress.

The state government, California, (surprise, surprise, surprise) has intimated our customers. Several large companies are withholding taxes from our payments in case we need to pay sales tax on our services. We don’t. It is our responsibility to pay sales taxes under our contract anyway.

What can I do? Sue my customer?

How in the heck in this environment can a business owner feel good, create jobs, and expand?

It's no wonder small businesses are in a sour mood. I have so many other stories from other small business owners that I know. The theme is the same. We are all up against overseas competition, against taxes, against the government, against societal acrimony.

Many of my business executive associates are looking to cash out if they could find a buyer at a decent price. As my friend, a former mid-size credit union COO and small business owner, says whenever one of the “good guys” – people who understand how to start businesses that are productive - throws in the towel and cashes in … “Another Atlas shrugs.”

The business climate is freaking insane. I don’t blame the insurers too much. It takes a government to make a market this screwed up.

Thanks to you and others, I pay more attention to Washington, D.C. and state legislatures. I also call to protest and give money to fiscal conservative candidates.

Unfortunately this takes time away from my business. But do I have a choice?

Unions get to pay people full-time to lobby on their behalf. Me? I work long weeks. I feel bad for my family if I don’t spend more time with them, but I cheat my son if I don’t fight for a better world for him.

As always, your coverage of all topics, including public sector unions, is wonderful, a great service, and greatly appreciated. You have an impact on us who don’t have time to do this on our own, but care about our society and want to contribute. I have given to so many individual campaigns and efforts around the country this year, more than the rest of my years combined. You are making a difference, thanks.

"Healthcare CEO"

Nursery Wholesaler Chimes In

David, a nursery wholesaler in Oregon writes ...

Hello Mish

We are not hiring either, why should we?

My wife and I own a small wholesale nursery in Oregon. Nurseries were shining star of agriculture in Oregon and elsewhere for the last @ 20+ years.

The contraction is causing sales to drop industry wide. A few nurseries have gone bankrupt in the last year. One bankruptcy auction netted the owner $.07 on the dollar. The bank may now need to take the land to pay the debt. You want to talk about striking fear into the nursery industry? Well $.07 cents on the dollar will certainly do it!

Others who are still hanging on have watched their sales drop up to 80% from the peak. Yes 80%! No new houses = no new yard and street landscaping, plain and simple.

Competition is fierce as everybody is trying to unload plants before they are too big and must be thrown out or must be planted into a larger container (more expense). Why put more money into something that may not sell anyway?

Our sales are down about 30% from last year. We are selling some plants that would have sold 2 years ago prior to the debt crunch. Overcapacity is everywhere in our industry, prices are dropping to move material instead of dumping it out which is a total loss.

Here is the first rule in small business: Everyone else gets paid first and you get what is left over. I'm not surprised the State of Oregon is having increasing budget problems, I think we will see another downward revision in the state budget in next couple of months.

Sincerely,

David

For more of the problems facing Oregon and other highly unionized states, please see Dysfunctional Oregon

Intel chief executive Paul Otellini offered a depressing set of observations about the economy and the Obama administration Monday evening, coupled with a dark commentary on the future of the technology industry if nothing changes.

Otellini's remarks during dinner at the Technology Policy Institute's Aspen Forum here amounted to a warning to the administration officials and assorted Capitol Hill aides in the audience: Unless government policies are altered, he predicted, "the next big thing will not be invented here. Jobs will not be created here."

Intel CEO Paul Otellini, who warned this week that the U.S. faces a huge tech decline.

(Credit: Intel) The U.S. legal environment has become so hostile to business, Otellini said, that there is likely to be "an inevitable erosion and shift of wealth, much like we're seeing today in Europe--this is the bitter truth."

Not long ago, Otellini said, "our research centers were without peer. No country was more attractive for start-up capital... We seemed a generation ahead of the rest of the world in information technology. That simply is no longer the case."

For instance: In 2005, midway through the Bush administration, Microsoft's Bill Gates told a Washington audience that curbs on immigration and guest workers would provide a boost to research institutions in China and India. A year earlier, then-Intel CEO Craig Barrett warned that the U.S. must dramatically improve its education system.

That never happened. Nor did politicians follow Gates' advice to rethink laws that led to foreign engineers being kicked out of the country as soon as they finish their degrees.

And now, six years later with no significant reforms, it should come as no surprise that the predictions have become more dire.

Deep in a 'Do' loop

Otellini singled out the political state of affairs in Democrat-dominated Washington, saying: "I think this group does not understand what it takes to create jobs. And I think they're flummoxed by their experiment in Keynesian economics not working."

Since an unusually sharp downturn accelerated in late 2008, the Obama administration and its allies in the U.S. Congress have enacted trillions in deficit spending they say will create an economic stimulus -- but have not extended the Bush tax cuts and have pushed to levy extensive new health care and carbon regulations on businesses.

"They're in a 'Do' loop right now trying to figure out what the answer is," Otellini said.

As a result, he said, "every business in America has a list of more variables than I've ever seen in my career." If variables like capital gains taxes and the R&D tax credit are resolved correctly, jobs will stay here, but if politicians make decisions "the wrong way, people will not invest in the United States. They'll invest elsewhere."

Take factories. "I can tell you definitively that it costs $1 billion more per factory for me to build, equip, and operate a semiconductor manufacturing facility in the United States," Otellini said.

The rub: Ninety percent of that additional cost of a $4 billion factory is not labor but the cost to comply with taxes and regulations that other nations don't impose. (Cypress Semiconductor CEO T.J. Rodgers elaborated on this in an interview with CNET, saying the problem is not higher U.S. wages but anti-business laws: "The killer factor in California for a manufacturer to create, say, a thousand blue-collar jobs is a hostile government that doesn't want you there and demonstrates it in thousands of ways.")

"If our tax rate approached that of the rest of the world, corporations would have an incentive to invest here," Otellini said. But instead, it's the second highest in the industrialized world, making the United States a less attractive place to invest--and create jobs--than places in Europe and Asia that are "clamoring" for Intel's business.

The comments from Intel's chief executive echoed statements made a day earlier by Carly Fiorina, the former HP CEO turned Republican Senate candidate.

America's skilled-worker visa system is so badly broken and anti-immigration that "we have to start from scratch," Fiorina said, adding that too many government policies push jobs overseas instead of making U.S. companies competitive against international rivals.

"Our corporate tax rates are the second highest in the world," and Congress has repeatedly failed to make an R&D tax credit permanent, Fiorina told the Aspen audience. It's time to start "acknowledging the reality that companies go where they're welcome," she said. (The effective U.S. corporate income tax is 35 percent, far over the industrialized-nation average of 18.2 percent.)

Chris Marangi, associate portfolio manager at Gamco Investors in Rye, N.Y., said Tuesday: "Capital is agnostic. It doesn't have a religion. It doesn't have a philosophy. It goes where it finds the highest returns." The problem, Marangi said, is that many other "countries have a more friendly regulatory regime than we do."

. Declan McCullagh is the chief political correspondent for CNET. You can e-mail him or follow him on Twitter as declanm. Declan previously was a reporter for Time and the Washington bureau chief for Wired and wrote the Taking Liberties section and Other People's Money column for CBS News' Web site.

That last article is a very good read. Something tells me the CEO of Intel knows more than the typical Dem jerk-off down in Washington when it comes to the economy. If they don't smarten up every American company that made its name here is going to leave.

"Corporate profits are soaring. Companies are sitting on billions of dollars of cash. And still, they've yet to amp up hiring or make major investments."

So writes The Washington Post about the recession's stubborn refusal to go away. The statisticians at the National Bureau of Economic Research declared the Great Recession over -- but tell that to people who can't find jobs. Today, businesses replace equipment and inventory, but they are reluctant to hire new workers. Investment that does occur aims at replacing the use of labor by adopting advanced technology. In a growing economy, that's a sign of progress. Freed-up workers are then available for new projects. But lately, those new projects aren't being launched.

The two wings of the establishment offer their usual remedies. Government-oriented types want more tax-financed "stimulus" spending, claiming last year's nearly trillion-dollar dose wasn't enough. That's dubious. As economist Mark Skousen writes, "(P)roduction and investment lead the economy into and out of a recession; retail demand is the most stable component of economic activity."

Business-oriented types want tax cuts. I'm sympathetic, but cuts should be accompanied by spending cuts, or the deficit will grow even uglier. There's no free lunch. Deficit spending must be covered by government borrowing, which takes capital that could be used for investment out of the private sector.

Why isn't the economy recovering? After previous recessions, unemployment didn't get stuck at close to 10 percent. If left alone, the economy can and does heal itself, as the mistakes of the previous inflationary boom are corrected.

The problem today is that the economy is not being left alone. Instead, it is haunted by uncertainty on a hundred fronts. When rules are unintelligible and unpredictable, when new workers are potential threats because of Labor Department regulations, businesses have little confidence to hire. President Obama's vaunted legislative record not only left entrepreneurs with the burden of bigger government, it also makes it impossible for them to accurately estimate the new burden.

In at least three big areas -- health insurance, financial regulation and taxes -- no one can know what will happen.

New intrusive rules for health insurance are yet to be written, and those rules will affect hiring, since most health insurance is provided by employers.

Thanks to the new 2,300 page Dodd-Frank finance regulatory act, The Wall Street Journal reports, there will be "no fewer than 243 new formal rule-makings by 11 different federal agencies." These as-yet unknown rules will govern lending to business and other key financial activity.

The George W. Bush tax cuts might be allowed to expire. But maybe not. Social Security and Medicare are dangerously shaky. Will Congress raise the payroll tax? A "distinguished" deficit commission is meeting. What will it do? Recommend a value-added tax?

Who knows? But few employers will commit to a big investment with those clouds hanging over our heads.

"As much as I might want to hire new salespeople, engineers and marketing staff in an effort to grow, I would be increasing my company's vulnerability to government," Michael Fleischer, president of Bogen Communications Inc., wrote in The Wall Street Journal.

Nothing more effectively freezes business in place than what economist and historian Robert Higgs calls "regime uncertainty."

"(A)ll of these unsettling possibilities and others of substantial significance must give pause to anyone considering a long-term investment, because any one of them has the potential to turn what seems to be a profitable investment into a big loser. In short, investors now face regime uncertainty to an extent that few have experienced in this country -- to find anything comparable, one must go back to the 1930s and 1940s, when the menacing clouds of the New Deal and World War II darkened the economic horizon."

Uncertainty created by Obama's legislative "successes" are comparable to the Depression and World War II? This does not bode well for job growth.

Higgs says: "Unless the government acts soon to resolve the looming uncertainties about the half-dozen greatest threats of policy harm to business, investors will remain for the most part on the sideline ... consuming wealth that might otherwise have been invested."

The "Summer of Recovery" is looking more and more like the Beltway Chainsaw Massacre for America's workers. As President Obama lolls on Martha's Vineyard with his well-heeled Chicago pals, a new Reuters/Ipsos poll shows that 72 percent of people are very worried about joblessness and 67 percent are very concerned about massive government spending.

After a nearly $1 trillion fiscal stimulus and several multibillion-dollar corporate and union bailouts, unemployment remains stuck near 10 percent nationwide; jobless claims rose again last week. One shudders to think how many more jobs will be on the chopping block after the vacationing president finishes "recharging his batteries."

The blame avoidance industry, of course, never takes a break. Capitol Hill Democrats blame George W. Bush. President Obama blames inaction by the, er, Democrat-controlled Congress. On Tuesday, Vice President Joe Biden derided GOP Leader John Boehner's speech on the Obama job-killing machine as a return to the past. Biden sneered about the "good old days" when Republicans held the majority in Washington. But laid-off, unemployed and endangered Americans in the health care sector, the auto industry, and the oil, mining, gas, and fishing industries are no doubt wondering: What's wrong with returning to the days when we had jobs and steady paychecks?

These are not the wealthy fat cats and Big Business titans Democrats love to demonize.

They're employees of companies like Assurant Health, which announced last week that it would slash 130 jobs at its offices in Milwaukee and Plymouth, Minn., to prepare for costly Obamacare mandates.

They're employees of medical device firms in Massachusetts, where officials say they'll be forced to cut back on operational costs and jobs thanks to a little-noticed Obamacare tax on their products that goes into effect in 2013.

They're employees of restaurants like White Castle and International House of Pancakes, whose executives say they will be forced into layoffs and premium hikes to cope with the federal law's $3,000-per-employee penalty on companies whose workers pay more than 9.5 percent of household income in premiums for company-provided insurance.

They're mom-and-pop enterprises across the country that must now deal with Obamacare's onerous Section 9006 tax-filing mandate. It requires them to file 1099 forms with the IRS for every vendor from whom they purchase $600 or more in goods. Nebraska GOP Sen. Mike Johanns calls it one of many "job-crushing provisions" that will bury small business in paperwork and legal costs.

They're the estimated 23,000 workers in the deepwater drilling industry whom the White House deliberately wrote off in pursuit of its junk science-based drilling moratorium.

They're the estimated tens of thousands of workers employed by car dealers that were shut down by Obama's auto czars at a time, as the TARP inspector general pointed out last month, "when the country was experiencing the worst economic downturn in generations and the government was asking its taxpayers to support a $787 billion stimulus package designed primarily to preserve jobs... -- all based on a theory and without sufficient consideration of the decisions' broader economic impact."

They're employees of Utah oil and gas companies whose leases have been pulled without cause by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar. The Interior Department's own Inspector General rejected Salazar's explanation that the Bush administration had rushed the leases through. The Deseret News reports that "rescinding these leases has likely cost the state millions already. Officials in Uintah county estimate the county lost 3,000 jobs in 2009, and Duchesne lost 1,000 jobs."

They're employees of commercial and recreational fishing businesses in New England, who have organized a flotilla on Martha's Vineyard on Thursday to protest the Obama administration's restrictive environmental policies and stealth regulatory ocean grab.

The White House has invested mightily in creating a propaganda infrastructure to tout its "jobs saved or created." Taxpayers need a full, transparent accounting of how many jobs Team Obama has destroyed. Call it Wreckovery.gov.

240, Straw, et al, say we are diverting attention with all the mosque talk from economic issues, so I started this thread and plan to update it frequently.

You know I always like your posts regarding the economy but the mosque shit was getting fucking lame really fast and dragged on waaaaay too long, I think there ae 20 different threads about it (at least).

You know I always like your posts regarding the economy but the mosque shit was getting fucking lame really fast and dragged on waaaaay too long, I think there ae 20 different threads about it (at least).

For me its not since i live here, but I get your point.

But lets see how many on the left even want to discuss the economy. I truly believe we are rapidly approaching the abyss on many levels.

240, Straw, et al, say we are diverting attention with all the mosque talk from economic issues, so I started this thread and plan to update it frequently.

Are you kidding? The left will praise Allah, for diversion from the economic issues. If the Dems run on that (i.e. the stimulus, the "Summer of Recovery", ObamaCare, jobs, etc.), THEY'RE GOING TO GET MURDERED!!!

New home sales numbers came in lower than expected, down to an annualized 276,000.

That's a 12.4% drop over June, and a 32.4% drop over July 2009.

Markets fell immediately on the news, but have rebounded somewhat:

Dow down 0.62%NASDAQ down 0.61%S&P 500 down 0.82%Also of interest, a massive glut in supply:

The median sales price of new houses sold in July 2010 was $204,000; the average sales price was $235,300. The seasonally adjusted estimate of new houses for sale at the end of July was 210,000. This represents a supply of 9.1 months at the current sales rate.

The consensus was for a slight improvement over June, at 340,000 annualized.

June home sales were an annualized 330,000, while May was at 267,000.

New home sales increased in June 23.6%, after falling 36.7% in May.

This comes after yesterday's massive 27.2% drop in existing home sales.

I was thinking of an interesting theory...although a bit farfetched. We all know how George Soros made billions betting against the British Pound years ago, and almost destroyed the Bank of England. There's been a lot of speculation that Soros played a huge role in getting Obama elected. What if his plan is to have Obama intentionally destroy the U.S. economy while he bets against the U.S. dollar and the Dow and anything else that he can profit from as a result of the downfall of America. Wouldn't Obama's policies be the perfect playbook for that?